Labour conference: what is the inspiration behind Ed Miliband's speech?

Many of the phrases used by Ed Miliband – quiet crisis, hard-working majority, new bargain, responsibility at the top and bottom – come from the other side of the Atlantic. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Such is the freewheeling half seminar, half festival structure in the Labour leader's office that it would be silly to suggest a single person will have structured the thinking behind Ed Miliband's keynote speech.

But many of the phrases – quiet crisis, hard-working majority, new bargain, responsibility at the top and bottom – come from the other side of the Atlantic.

The quiet crisis, for instance, stems from Thomas L Friedman's book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.

He argued that US dominance of the world was slowly drifting away as American students fell behind their Asian rivals in key subjects such as maths. The flattening world has allowed just about anyone to obtain knowledge, and the US is now competing against similar or better rivals.

Friedman quotes Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 1999 as saying: "The sky is not falling, nothing horrible is going to happen today.

"The US is still the leading engine for innovation in the world. It has the best graduate programmes, the best scientific infrastructure, and the capital markets to exploit it. But there is a quiet crisis in US science and technology that we have to wake up to."

But the big themes comes from Stan Greenberg, the veteran Democrat pollster, and James Morris, the chief of the UK arm of Greenberg's company, Greenberg Quinlan Rossner.

Greenberg worked for Bill Clinton in 1992, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Morris does some speechwriting for Miliband.

Greenberg set out his current thinking in a long piece in the New York Times discussing why Barack Obama "can't catch a break from the American public on the economy, even though he prevented a depression and saved global capitalism".

Most of his thinking applies to social democratic parties in Europe. Greenberg started with an admission of uncertainty, saying: "During this period of economic crisis and uncertainty, voters are generally turning to conservative and rightwing political parties, most notably in Europe and in Canada.

"It's perplexing. When unemployment is high and the rich are getting richer, you would think that voters of average means would flock to progressives, who are supposed to have their interests in mind, and who historically have delivered for them."

He argued that voters feel estranged from government and associate Democrats with government, just as they associate Labour with government.

He argued that Democrats have to find a way to change voters' feelings, saying that, "so long as government is seen as disreputable", they will not listen to progressives even if they agree with progressive policies.

He argued: "This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy that sidelines Democrats and liberalism. Just a quarter of the country is optimistic about our system of government – the lowest since polls by ABC and others began asking this question in 1974.

"But a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn't hurt Republicans. If government is seen as useless, what is the point of electing Democrats who aim to use government to advance some public end?"

In remarks already echoed in official trails of Miliband's speech, Greenberg said voters believed government "operates by the wrong values and rules, for the wrong people and purposes. Government rushes to help the irresponsible and does little for the responsible. Wall Street lobbyists govern, not Main Street voters. Politicians take care of themselves and party interests, while government grows remote and unresponsive, leaving people feeling powerless".

He added" "In our surveys and media work for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, we found that only if people thought a candidate was going to change government in fundamental ways – starting with welfare and reinventing government – would they give permission to spend their money.

"The same is true today. In our recent web survey of 2,000 respondents, voters respond strongly to Democratic messages on the economy only when a party leader declares: 'We have to start by changing Washington … The middle class won't catch a break until we confront the power of money and the lobbyists.

"In surveys, they tell me that they think the politicians and the chief executives are 'piggybacking off each other'. They think that the game is rigged, and that the wealthy and big industries get policies that reinforce their advantage."

Hence we hear talk of Miliband promising to tear up the rule book, taking on the banking elite, breaking up the rigged market in electricity and railways, and standing by the hard-working majority.

Greenberg also set out how the system is not working for the squeezed middle. He wrote: "The evidence is piling up that the economy is not working for the middle class. Productivity and education increase, but wages do not follow."

He argued that Labour and the left must sound less enthralled by the joys of globalisation – something Miliband has done by admitting that it did squeeze wages and disturb settled communities.

"While government and the elite appear blithely to promote globalisation and economic integration, while the working population loses income, makes the frustration more intense," Greenberg wrote.

Voters also hated the way Obama appeared to bail out the bankers and auto companies, he said. His focus groups told him the average citizen doesn't "get money for free".

Their conclusion? Government works for the irresponsible, not the responsible. This is already a Miliband theme, although some of the Greenberg solutions for this liberal crisis may not work in the UK due to the unique nature of the Labour link with the unions.

He proposed: "The Democrats have to start detoxifying politics by proposing to severely limit or bar individual and corporate campaign contributions, which would mean a fight with the supreme court.

"If they want to win the trust of the public, Democrats should propose taxing lobbyist expenses and excessive chief executive bonuses and put a small fee on the sale of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments.

"To show that government can protect the nation's interests, Democrats should advocate policies that would control the borders and address problems of undocumented workers.

"Dealing with this is even more important in Europe, where anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic parties are surging at the expense of the mainstream left and right parties.

"Our work in Austria and Britain shows that it is possible for progressives to champion immigration policies that protect the labour market and promote and require integration, beginning with language and schooling.

"Just as Mr Clinton's welfare reform in 1996 required efforts to make work pay and expand childcare, immigration reform can show how progressives punish irresponsibility and reward responsibility."

Finally, in words that must have been rammed down Ed Balls's throat, he argued that "progressives have to be serious about reducing the country's long-term deficits".

"The deficit matters to people, and has real meaning and consequences," he said. "A government that spends and borrows without the kind of limits that would govern an ordinary family is going to have big troubles.

"Rather than treating deficit reduction as an 'eat your peas moment', progressives should embrace the liberal thinktanks' bold deficit plans, which would raise taxes more and defend progressive priorities.

"Recently, it has been the conservatives, the Tea Party members and the anti-immigrant groups who understand the anger with government, and rush in to exploit it. Perhaps now, with the debacle in Washington, liberals will become instinctively angry with this illegitimate government and build their politics from there."

It will be interesting to see whether Miliband can pull off this trick – if not today, then over the next three months. The route map is there.